How many questions arise from her confident and radiant gaze, a blend of thoughts that have surfaced. Each of her creations holds an immense perceptive and intelligent charisma, with the power to freely shape another world – one filled with women in sensual poses, featuring prominent noses and facial features that flow across the canvas in a perpetual stream, like water running through fingers.
Katarina Janečková Walshe, “Mother Land”, installation view at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2024. Artworks © Katarina Janečková Walshe. Images courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons
We are referring to Katarina Janečková Walshe (1988, Bratislava, Slovakia; lives and works in Corpus Christi, Texas), an artist filled with formidable symbolic references who tells the story of her own fantastical existence, imbued with love for the natural world, a refined sense of eroticism, understood as a free and poetic expression of herself, and a profound awareness of motherhood, along with an unconditional love for her children. On the occasion of her first solo exhibition at an American museum – running until December 6, 2024, at the Austin Museum in Texas, titled Katarina Janečková Walshe, Mother Land, curated by Robin K. Williams – the artist confirms her possession of an independent artistic pursuit, undoubtedly focused on pure emotional and physical impact, also born from a sweet and spiritual sense of wonder in her soul, deeply interested in everything that surrounds her.
Katarina Janečková Walshe, “Mother Land”, installation view at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2024. Artworks © Katarina Janečková Walshe. Images courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Brian Fitzsimmons
For the purposes of this studio visit, it is of interest to understand how the artist, having distanced herself from her studio in Texas, now finds herself in the voluntary condition of having separated from the relationships built over a decade, in order to regenerate in a new land. From these territories, Janečková Walshe absorbs materials and new practices, devising and experimenting with innovative techniques for unique forms of creative study. From this stem the physical and emotional relationship that the artist weaves with her working environment, avoiding absolute ties to any fixed location and instead exploring wherever the intersection between creation, the natural environment, and reality occurs. Moreover, working outdoors, Janečková Walshe visually and materially absorbs everything that surrounds her, such as the heaviness of weight, the shapes of bodies and stones and the rhythm of the intense light in the countryside where she creates her works. Her painting is mixed with natural elements laid upon the canvas and then left to dry in the open air, so that colors and textures can emerge freely. Furthermore, by working with earthy tones, she infuses her works with the vivid scents of nature, reaffirming that for her, any place that embraces her truthfully can be considered a “studio”.
Katarina Janečková Walshe, “Mother Land”, installation view at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2024. Artworks © Katarina Janečková Walshe. Images courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein
Thus, the relationship with the open environment, conceived as a workspace, becomes anything but marginal; it is an essential condition for capturing the magic of the artist’s practice. Her work represents an extreme synthesis of the natural environment, procreation, birth and the emotional values of a mother and wife, elements that all contribute to the exceptional vitality of her fluid and vibrantly luminous painting practice. Additionally, through her large-scale installations, she gives viewers the impression of being deeply involved in her reality, which reflects a specific and spiritual existence of a woman with abundant and fertile breasts and deep eyes. This generates a realistic perception of being inside an open field, validating the idea that the artist is not simply creating an artwork, but narrating the entire context from which it originated, offering us the opportunity to directly experience her reality.
Katarina Janečková Walshe, “Mother Land”, installation view at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2024. Artworks © Katarina Janečková Walshe. Images courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein
Even though Janečková Walshe’s experience, presented at the Austin Museum, is deeply personal and intimate, it is also highly iconic, archaic and therefore universal. By touching on autobiographical issues, it manages to brush upon universal aspects of a theory of us, making us perceive their complexity, with the spontaneous presence of questions directly reflected in the works on display. In this way, it becomes clear that, for the artist, the opinion that the creative process flows through the body, eventually merging with physis[1], holds true. Moreover, for Janečková Walshe, the act of creation is akin to birth, aligning with the artistic literature from the 14th century, where painting was compared to the act of procreation, to the point of viewing the body as pregnant with creative potential[2].
Katarina Janečková Walshe, “Mother Land”, installation view at The Contemporary Austin – Jones Center on Congress Avenue, 2024. Artworks © Katarina Janečková Walshe. Images courtesy The Contemporary Austin. Photograph by Alex Boeschenstein
Additionally, the artist, perhaps unconsciously, plays with the topic of authorship in art, which reveals itself as open and passed down from generation to generation. She instinctively and freely involves her children in the creative process, organizing her work as a shared, cyclical and infinite event, ensuring that her pieces are always evolving and never final. For these reasons, her works are monumental in their size and figurative scale and while they reflect the world around them, they are also inherently fragile, open to new possible metamorphoses in their presentation. In other words, her practice represents an act of pure, balanced, and orderly mastery between the mind, the hand, and the natural environment. The questions that follow aim to understand the significance of the work produced in her “studio” as presented at The Contemporary Austin, and what exactly the artist means by this term.
Katarina Janečková Walshe in her studio; Katarina Janečková Walshe, “Bearing Witness”, 2024, acrylic, ink, pigments and oil on canvas, 518 x 175 cm. Artwork and image courtesy of the artist
Maria Vittoria Pinotti: Where did you work for the production of the artworks presented at The Contemporary Austin Museum in Texas?
Katarina Janečková Walshe: Most of the artworks for the ‘MOTHER LAND’ were created near Texas Hill country where we lived at our off the grid cabin, a bit in the middle of nowhere, yet at the center of our universe. My studio and our home were near the river and I mostly painted outside, so my thoughts were constantly present with the climate changing, river drying, rain making it’s marks on my paintings along with my children.
Katarina Janečková Walshe, “Topography of Sorrows and Portals of Hope”, 2024, acrylic, ink, pigments, and oil stick on canvas. 180 x 257 cm. Artwork and image courtesy the artist
Why have you chosen to move away from Corpus Christi in Texas, where you worked for ten years?
I moved to Texas from Slovakia because of my Texan husband, and we stayed for next ten years mainly because of his work and family-these were challenging years that were also transformative for me. Besides the endless inspiration from the nature and different culture, Texas gave me a lot of strength and courage to get out of my comfort zone, to find out who I am, what are my beliefs, and how to advocate for them. Despite Texas being forever part of my heart, I feared for the future of my children being a part of USA systems, school shootings, materialistic values. I am grateful for everyone who stays and pushes against these values unapologetically and with love, and I hope I can keep being part of the change by doing so from afar.
Katarina Janečková Walshe, “Adaptation”, 2024, acrylic, ink, pigments, and oil stick on canvas, 284 x 498 cm. Artwork and image courtesy the artist
What does the ‘artist’s studio’ mean for you?
A temple for everyone, anything and everything, whether it’s the nature, tiny space, professional studio or just a place inside of us where we create and it gets out eventually. I like for all these imaginary and real spaces to feel free with no boundaries, creating bridges between all human beings.
Maria Vittoria Pinotti
[1] The term Physis originally refers to the force of nature and the ordering divinity of the Kosmos
[2] Andreas Beyer, Body painting, in Il corpo dell’artista. La traccia nascosta della vita nell’arte, Giulio Einaudi Editore, 2023, pp. 27- 29
Info:
Katarina Janečková Walshe. Mother Land
curated by Robin K. Williams
06/09/2024 – 08/12/2024
The Contemporary Austin, Texas
Jones Center, 700 Congress Avenue, Austin, Texas 78701
Opening hours: Wednesday from 12pm to 9pm, Thursday to Sunday, 12pm to 6pm
https://thecontemporaryaustin.org/
Maria Vittoria Pinotti (1986, San Benedetto del Tronto) is an art historian, author, and independent critic. She currently is the coordinator of Claudio Abate’s photographic archive and Manager at Elena Bellantoni’s Studio. From 2016 to 2023 she was the Gallery Manager in a gallery in the historic center of Rome. She has worked with ministerial offices such as the General Secretariat of the Ministry of Culture and the Central State Archive. Currently, she collaborates with cultural sector magazines, focusing on in-depth thematic studies dedicated to modern and contemporary art.
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